Towards a plurilingual habitus: engendering interlinguality in urban spaces

This article focuses on the potential of the multilingual city to create spaces in which monolingual hegemonies may be challenged, inclusive, intercultural values may be nurtured, and plurilingualism may be valorised. Following a contextualisation of linguistic diversity in theories of globalisation and superdiversity, discourses of deficit and power are addressed, arguing that the problematisation of multilingualism and pathologisation of plurilingualism reflect a monolingual habitus. Bringing about a shift towards a plurilingual habitus requires a Deep Approach, as it involves a critical revaluing of deep-seated dispositions. It suggests that the city offers spaces, which can engender interlinguality, a construct that includes interculturality, criticality and a commitment to creative and flexible use of other languages in shared, pluralistic spaces. It then proposes critical, participatory and ethnographic research in three multidimensional spaces: the urban school and a potential interlingual curriculum; networks, lobbying for inclusive policy and organising celebratory events in public spaces; and grass roots-level local spaces, some created by linguistic communities to exercise agency and maintain their languages and cultures, and some emerging as linguistically hybrid spaces for convivial encounter

Developing a conceptual framework : the case of MAGICC

This paper reports the steps taken to develop the conceptual framework of the MAGICC project (2013), which aimed to provide action-oriented descriptions of multilingual and multicultural academic and professional communication competence, instructional designs to promote these in higher education language teaching, and multidimensional forms of assessment aligned with the learning outcomes established – all presented in an academic ePortfolio that expands the features of the existing European Language Portfolio (ELP) to the higher education level. “Starting with systematic desk research into the existing conceptualisations of multi/plurilingual and multi/ intercultural competences as well as lifelong learning and employability skills, the next step was to collect and analyse the data gathered from all partner institutions and existing national and European projects on descriptors already in place for academic level competences, practices and assessment. […] To ensure the social relevance of the framework, the third step was to develop questionnaires for students, faculty, and employers and ask them to rank the synthesised skill and competence descriptors in terms of their importance for the academic and professional competences graduates would need for study purposes as well as for the global labour market. The first draft of the conceptual framework was revised on the basis of this stakeholder consultation and led to the version presented to a new group of selected stakeholders in a consultation seminar” (Räsänen 2014: 66–67).peerReviewe